Via YAHOO News Feed: “Noticed those little orange boxes on the Web lately with the letters “XML?” Nice little article that says a lot about RSS gaining ground in the mainstream. Does your library web site have a feed for news and info?
Contributors Michael Stephens
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One of the posts that got lost when my previous blog software crashed mid-conference was about Tuesday March 9, the day before the conference started when many of my colleagues and I were teaching preconference workshops. I started the day by swinging by the Cabinet Room and giving my best to Jenny and Steven who were doing their Blogging 101 program. Then, Scott Brandt and I spent the morning fine-tuning our 5-Star workshop I wrote about here. Lunch was provided by InfoToday, offering a chance to have some good food and see old friends from previous conferences. A group of […]
Barbara Quint’s wit and writing send me everytime! I was so happy to be on the panel with her at IL (even though she was just on a speaker phone, she captured the room with her words!) Read this: http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/feb04/voice.shtml Looking forward, Quint theorizes that digital libraries (huge digital libraries..) will allow 24/7 access to huge amounts opf easily published materials. How do librarians fit in? “The trick for the future of the profession,” she writes, ” lies in finding new tasks that need doing, new ways to do them, and ways to convince clients everywhere that they need us.”
http://www.lib.unc.edu/house/im_a_librarian.html I love this! (And I was quoted at CIL giving my opinion on Virtual Reference software so this just supports my idea that IM ref could work!) Why not get on a standard system that is deeply ingrained in our techno-culture instead of making our users wade through java-enabled Web pages and chat environements that sometimes do not work the way they should? Give em something they already know. How do we best serve our users? (the PEOPLE part)
Aaron discovers and moblogs a very cool thing: http://www.thebizz.org/archives/001233.html and ponders “I wonder how many years it’ll be until libraries are offering text notifications to patrons. PC to phone messages are cheap or free…staff training would be the only issue, and probably not that big of one.” Sounds good to me. Steven Abrams words at CIL keep coming back to me in various ways: are the young adults who are texting now going to want to get a e-mail from their librarians?
Sharing the slot with Bob and I was Angela Ballard, Information Technology Training Librarian at NCSU. Her talk was titled “Ahead of the Curve: Insuring Success of a Technology Training Program for Library Staff” and it really hit home some very important points. To insure a successful Technology/IT Training program: The library must take responsibility and devote time and resources The library must provide a training reesponse to every library-wide technology implementation The library must provide tools for on the job tech training The library must distribute training responsibilities. They do about 50 classes a year at NCSU. AND adminstrators […]
Scott Brandt and I did our pre-conference workshop Tuesday afternoon. “Make Learning Stick: Creating 5 Star User Centered Training & Instruction”featured a DVD presentation about Bob, a harried trainer faced with training his entire staff on Web mail. We outlined 5 factors to insure training is user-focused and successful everytime! We had 23 participants and a lot of fun. It was an afternoon session and I must confess by 3pm were were all a little bleary eyed but Scott provided chocolate and we sailed through the rest of the session. Thanks to all who participated! Here are the workshop leaders […]
One of my favorite parts of this conference: lisdtening to some forward-thinking speakers outline what the future may hold for library services… What follows is an annotated congrunt… Roy Tennant Theme: Digital Libraries XML — Standards must improve Harvesting data University faculty are realizing the crisis with scholarly communication Also: Storage!“As somone who has recently landscaped his house, I can officially say that storage is cheaper than dirt.” – Roy Tennant (Quote from theshiftedlibrarian.com) (I roared!) Mary Kennedy Theme: Getting Personal ?It?s all about me!? The personal experience is the most important! Space is a community space (That?s what I?m […]
Frank Cervone, Assistant University Librarian, Northwestern University Our users don?t know what DB the results came from, journal title is important?they just want the info. What can you link to: OPAC DBs What is federated searching? ?Squishy at this point? Metasearch: searches that use metadata to make decisions Megasearch: Dogpile, AlltheWeb, etc. Can be combined into a superset of federated searching Why is this so complicated? Not all protocols are supported by vendors: Z39.50 Tips for implementation: Select software Select hardware Gather provider info Gather holdings info Input the two (lightweight cataloging of the resources) Configure the connection information
It’s always good to check in with these…. Top Tech Trends January 2004 I like the listing by conference because you can see what’s hot (“…that RFID is so HOT right now…”) and what’s not (“…virtual reference is dead…”) (which I’m still trying to figure out.)